Hilton Head Island, SC – March 19, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Romans 13:1-7; Mark 12:13-17
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to entrap him in his talk. – Mark 12:13
The Protestant Reformation in Germany started out relatively well, but eventually it degenerated into a terrible and bloody conflict called The Thirty Years War. It lasted from 1618 to1648. Germany at that time was not a single united nation but rather many small principalities governed by ruling families which had been in power for many years or generations.
Because of the Reformation, the German princes all identified themselves either as Roman Catholics or Protestants, which in the case of Germany obviously meant Lutherans. There was a Latin phrase which described the situation in four brief words: Cujus regio, ejus religio. It meant, “Whose the region, his the religion.” In other words, the particular brand of Christianity of the prince determined what was to be the particular brand of Christianity for the entire principality.
In time armies from other nations were drawn into the fray. Thus Protestant and Catholic princes and armies arrayed themselves against one another, thousands of people were killed, and Christianity in Germany and elsewhere in Europe was severely damaged for many decades afterward. In a sense, the essential precepts taught by the Prince of Peace have never fully recovered on the continent where Christianity gained its earliest major foothold.
In Britain, a similar protracted conflict ensued earlier from the time of Henry VIII. That brilliant, gifted, hugely flawed man was convinced he needed a son. England had not had a queen for the previous fifteen centuries. He had been married for years to the daughter of the King of the Spain. Catherine had borne him six children, but only one, Mary, survived infancy.
Henry then divorced Catherine, and married Anne Boleyn, who gave birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth. Henry founded the Church of England, modestly naming himself the “Supreme Defender of the Faith.” In that case “the faith” meant Anglo-Catholic-but-definitely-not-Lutheran Anglicanism. Then Henry had Anne Boleyn beheaded because she gave him only one other child, stillborn, and besides that, a girl. Henry was getting on in years, so he quickly married Jane Seymour, who gave him a son, Edward, and she died twelve days after Edward was born.
When Henry died in 1547, his son, Edward VI, became king through a regency. Protestant Anglicanism continued as the state religion. Not long afterward, Edward died, and then Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary, “Bloody Mary,” became queen. She was fiercely Roman Catholic, and England once again for a short time reverted to Catholicism. But then Mary herself died, and Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, became queen. And she was, and remained, Anglican to her death many years later, in 1603. And then, under various unfortunate and/or inept Stuart kings, England was at various times again Catholic and again Anglican, and, after the Civil War and the beheading of Charles I, Calvinistic Puritan, which meant Congregationalist, sort of. Then the Glorious Revolution put the unfortunate and really inept Charles II back on the throne, and Anglicanism finally became the state religion of England once again, which it still is.
And why do I tell you all this? I do it to suggest that it is a highly dubious political situation when politics uses religion, or when religion uses politics, to establish a particular form of religion as the officially declared religion of any state or nation. Invariably it leads to disaster.
The first part of the first sentence in the first Amendment to the Constitution declares this: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Thus we were never to have a nationally-recognized religion. Yet Calvinistic Puritanism was the official religion of Massachusetts well past the time the United States Constitution was adopted and Massachusetts became a state.
The First Amendment was a way for the Founding Fathers clearly and unambiguously to insist that the USA would never be subject to the mistakes Europe, especially England, had made in adopting state-sponsored versions of Christianity. An officially-recognized religion of any sort anywhere is guaranteed to satisfy only a minority of the people of that state or nation, and they are the people who are actively engaged in that religion. Other believers who don’t approve of that brand of religion are always unhappy, as are all the people who refuse to identify with any form of religion, and they may constitute the majority of people in almost every modern nation. Civil religion, in which a civil government and a whole society supposedly endorse a particular kind of religion for their own political purposes, is and has always been a very bad idea.
But civil religion is not new. The ancient Egyptians made Egyptian religion the state religion. The ancient Mesopotamians did the same for their religion. So did the Israelites, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the early and medieval Christians, the Arabs, the Turks, and every other major power throughout history. Government enlists all the support it can find from any source, and religion is a useful source for governments to establish themselves.
In Jesus’ time, as we all know, the Jewish nation of Judea was under the thumb of the Roman Empire. Some Jews, the Zealots, were terrorists who waged hit-and-run battles in an endless undeclared asymmetrical war with the Romans. Other Jews, the Herodians, on the basis of that ancient maxim, “If you can’t beat them, join them,” decided that they would try to keep in the good graces of Rome by being as cooperative and chummy as possible.
It is almost impossible to imagine that anyone, Jewish or Roman, thought Jesus of Nazareth was truly attempting to establish a re-vitalized Jewish kingdom in a distant corner of the Roman Empire. The major emphasis of Jesus was on something he frequently called the kingdom of God. He may have had an interest in the kingdoms of this world, but if so, he said almost nothing directly about it. The kingdom of God was Jesus’ primary focus.
A few days before Jesus was crucified, the Herodians joined forces with the main theological enemies of Jesus, the Pharisees, in trying to set a trap for Jesus with the Romans. The Pharisees thought Jesus was too radical a Jew, and the Herodians thought he was too independent a Jew for the good of the whole Jewish nation. They favored collaborating with the Romans. Therefore, obsequiously oozing oily words, the two groups of enemies of Jesus said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man, and bow to no human being, however majestic. Instead you honestly proclaim only the way of God. So,” said these duplicitous would-be tricksters, trying to spring their trap, “is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
What a clever stratagem, they thought to themselves! “If Jesus says we should pay taxes to Rome, it will anger all the Jews, who want the Romans out, and if he says we shouldn’t pay taxes, it will enrage the Romans, who depend on taxes to fund their empire. Gotcha, Jesus!”
Jesus, knowing their cunning intentions, asked for a coin. He was given a coin of the realm, which of course meant a Roman coin. “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” Jesus asked, seemingly the very soul of political innocence and naivete. “Caesar’s,” the smirking dolts replied. Jesus quietly answered, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Both Mark and Matthew tell us that the dumbfounded Herodians and Pharisees were amazed at Jesus, and they couldn’t come up with another trick in response.
Where is this going, you wonder. Is this a history lesson, or what, you wonder. Patience, friends. We are headed somewhere. This is not primarily about history, although history helps explain it. But we have one more biblical note before coming to the real point of this sermon.
The apostle Paul never knew Jesus. He said he saw him in a vision on the road to Damascus, but the historical Paul never personally encountered the historical Jesus. Furthermore, when Paul began writing his letters to various churches around the eastern Mediterranean area, the Romans were becoming increasingly furious with the resolutely resisting Jews of Judea, and by extension, everywhere else where there were any Jews. Romans simply didn’t understand the religious fervor of the Jews. The Romans had almost no fervor for religious matters at all, but for political and governmental matters they were genuine zealots. Maintaining imperial power is what set their political juices coursing through their imperious, imperial veins.
Knowing that, Paul deliberately chose to become a latter-day Herodian, or as Americans might state it, a Benedict Arnold, although without actual treason against either Christians or Jews. In that regard, Paul was politically profoundly conservative. His philosophy regarding the relationship of the brand-new Christian religion to the Roman state was this: Don’t rock the boat. Never rock the boat. Play along with Rome, because if you don’t, you’ll be crushed. Be nice.
This was the political conservatism out of which Paul wrote the thirteenth chapter of his letter to the Romans. He opened his thoughts on this important issue with these words: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Or, as it is translated in the more familiar words of the King James Version of the Bible, “The powers that be are ordained of God.”
Horsefeathers! Unbaked hassenpfeffer! Balderdash! It is absurd even vaguely to hint that all governments are ordained of God! It is ridiculous! The current government of Russia? The government of North Korea? Saddam Hussein? Hitler? Stalin? Tojo? Get real, Paul!
But you see, in his early years as a new Christian, Paul believed that Jesus would soon return to the earth, and the world would therefore end. In the meantime, Paul said, for Christianity to prosper and make as much progress in as short a time as possible, it had to keep a low profile and get along with Rome. His inclination may have been correct, but his advice has been taken literally for two thousand years by conservative Christians who were willing to put up with unconscionably unjust governments all across the planet. Resistance is unchristian, they claim.
Few serious Christians believe Jesus is about to return to the earth, so we need not be nearly as cautious as Paul declared. And now to the point of the sermon.
Many people think the USA is, and should be, a “Christian nation.” According to a poll by the Religion Research Institute, 55% of Tea Party people think it is, while only 39% of Americans as a whole believe that. But there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Nor can there be a Jewish nation (including Israel, at least in the religious sense), or a Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist nation. There are religious people in every nation on earth, but no nation is a “religious nation.” Thank God history has rendered that be undeniably true. Nations cannot possibly be “religious,” even though many nations have tried to create civil religions of many types. Germany and England in the 1500s and 1600s had civil religions, and it nearly tore them apart. A few of the American colonies and states had civil religions in the 1600s and1700s, and they were ill-served by that false and even idolatrous identity. Christians can be genuinely religious, but it is not possible for nations to be truly religious. Religion ought never to be perceived by anyone as national badge of honor or as a national obligation. Following religious precepts can only be an individual’s choice or obligation, not a nation’s choice or obligation.
In the 1920s, conservative/evangelical Christianity sought to conscript America into their particular theological system, attempting to equate it with America. The movie The Best Man starred Henry Fonda as an idealistic non-religious presidential candidate. The then-President, a member of the same party, thought the Fonda character was the best man for the job. Thinking back to former times when religion was used to baptize all governmental policies, the seasoned President said to the candidate, “In those days we had to pour God over everything, like ketchup.”
God and particular notions of God are still used in the same way. The State Constitution of South Carolina declares that “No person shall be eligible to the office of governor who denies the existence of a Supreme Being.” That statement was inserted into our state’s constitution by good-hearted but wrong-headed “evangelical” Christians. In 1973 the US Supreme Court, in the Roe vs. Wade decision, guaranteed the right of every woman to an abortion. Ever since, on religious grounds the Religious Right has been trying to overturn that decision. They have succeeded in making abortions almost impossible to obtain in many states. They have consistently opposed gay adoptions, gay marriages, and transgender rights, and have been very committed and persistent on getting state or national legislatures to transform their ideas into laws. In effect they want to make America what they think is a “Christian nation” once again. In doing this, they are willing to trample on the rights of citizens who disagree with their particular religious ideas.
Federal and state legislators in the present moment are being pressured to revert to a political situation which has proven divisive and disastrous innumerable times in the past, when a version of Christianity was enshrined at various levels of government. Last summer, when the Republican National Convention was being held, our state senator, Tom Davis, a Republican, expressed deep concern in an Associated Press newspaper story about what was happening. Tom Davis is a conservative Republican in many respects. But he spoke of the 2016 Republican platform as a “screed of intolerance,” with its fulminations about transgender people using public bathrooms of their own choice rather than being forced to use bathrooms of their sex at birth. Sen. Davis warned of electoral repercussions if the GOP insisted on violating LGBT rights. But that has not happened. The latter-day Christian Coalition continues, stronger than ever.
The world desperately needs good, well-reasoned government. It also needs genuine human-values-oriented religion. What it doesn’t need is an overt or covert attempt to yoke the two. When Thomas Jefferson proclaimed the importance of a dividing wall of separation between church and state, he did this nation – and the world – a great service. American citizens must continuously suppress the persistent attempts of particular kinds of Christians to establish a civil religion.